


Drawing a Blank

by Dorktapus42



Series: Come Together-verse [24]
Category: Youtube (RPF)
Genre: Anxiety! Yay!, I swear the party scenario is just default lol, Ohoh this is gonna be fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 10:23:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18259358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorktapus42/pseuds/Dorktapus42
Summary: Host doesn't miss very much. He can't really- his abilities don't let him forget things.Then what, and why, can't he remember?





	Drawing a Blank

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of a lovely idea by NightmareJasmine.   
> (I hope this is what you were thinking of lol it'll be clearer in the next one.)

Host had no idea what was happening. Too many people, too many senses, too many flavours… when he was trying to focus on one thing it was like trying to pick a single flute out of an orchestra. 

There was a reason he usually sat out of most parties. 

“Hey Host? You okay?”

The voice was that of one of the Sanders but… he couldn’t focus enough to find out who. 

“The Host is… going to go retire to his library.”

“Okay. You want me to keep you company?” He narrowed it to… either Virgil or maybe October. He didn’t know that many of them without his senses activated fully, and that would have given him a splitting migraine in a crowd of this many people. 

“The Host is fine.”

Then somebody cranked up the music and he flinched, it mixing with the crackling of a fire and the crashing of waves and the smells of so many different things… And he’d brought back his senses as much as he dared. It was still too overwhelming. His hands twitched with the phantom sensations of running through fur and thumbing through a deck of cards and tongue tingled with the tastes of metal and strawberries and pumpkin spice. He stood, clasping his hands over his ears and trying to navigate his way to where he thought the nearest door was- with his senses held up like this he could only rely on his frankly mediocre memory of the space for what to do. 

Then somebody grabbed his arm and started to lead him somewhere. He considered fighting but the scent of lavender started to overpower everything else, leading him to believe it was most likely Virgil. 

Soon enough the sounds started to fade into the distance and the tastes stopped lingering on his tongue. The only scent was lavender and a comfortable feeling of a heavy blanket over his shoulders, even though he knew that was just part of the way his head registered Virgil’s aura like he did with everything else. 

“You feeling better?”

He nodded, cautiously lowering his hands from his ears. The sounds were much further away. He relaxed, hands finally stopping their phantom twitches. He knew if he put his senses back to normal he’d be in hell, so he reigned them back as much as he could, even if it was slowly becoming harder and harder to feel so blocked off from everything.

“You want me to lead you to the library?”

He shook his head. The silence would be nice but… he’d never be able to get anywhere without running into something every third step. He just had to get this over with. 

He opened the floodgates and almost fell over. Woah. Woah. Okay. He was okay. 

Then his mind was barraged with tons of blurry, unfocused images and he went very, very still. 

Was this some kind of cruel joke? 

But his powers didn’t work like that. He should really write this down. I̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶r̶.̶

But for now he’d observe. 

Okay… what was he seeing…

Something shifted just past his focus.

What was he seeing? It was… really dark. The images had ceased before he could interpret them. It was just… dark. Like: not blind levels of dark, which he knew intimately, but… it was like his mind was completely void of anything. Like when he had just lost his eyes, except he wasn’t feeling any pain either.

The hell? 

It was only when he didn’t see anything for about twenty seconds did he get worried. Did he accidentally recall his senses? But that took a lot of effort. Had he overstimulated himself or something? Had everything just… turned off as a survival mechanism?

He couldn’t feel anything. No sensing, no smelling, no tasting, no hearing- 

He started to panic. 

He couldn’t move his arms. Okay, maybe someone had restrained him. That made sense, right? He was probably freaking the fuck out in the real world. But he was getting _ nothing. _

And that was absolutely terrifying. 

He couldn’t get nothing. It was how he lived, how he did things, it was his coping mechanism. 

What the hell was happening? 

 

\-------

 

One second, Host had been recovering fine. He understood it, really he did. Without eyesight he had to rely on his other senses, and all of them had been stimulated with something out there. 

So he did the smart thing and helped guide him out of that hellhole of a party. 

Then he’d offered to guide Host to the library and everything had just gone wrong. Host had frozen as still as a statue, not responding for a good minute, and just fell to the floor. 

Shit. That couldn’t be good.

He went and got Dark. 

|What happened?|

“No idea. He just froze and collapsed.”

Dark absently opened a door in the wall that led straight to medbay. |Mind giving me a hand?|

So they set him down on a bed and Dark went and got both doctors. 

Neither of them had any idea what to do. Or what happened. 

“I’d say it’s like a comatose state but… he should be doing what he normally does. I can’t explain it. All of this points to him just… being normal.”

Then he poked him experimentally. 

Nothing showed up. 

“Huh. That’s weird. It’s like all of his senses just… shut off.”

|What?| Dark said harshly. |That makes no sense.|

“I have no idea. I mean, Host hasn’t ever really given us any information on how he sees the world so…”

At that moment Chase burst through the door. “What’s going on? Patton noticed Virgil leave and I saw the door when I went to make sure everything was alright- what happened to Host?”

“He’s not responding to anything. Like all of his senses have just shut off. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Maybe he was getting overstimulated?”

They looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Okay. You know how I sometimes just sit at the bar downstairs until the early hours of the morning and help you lot with your problems?”

There were general nods of agreement. 

“Well I was talking with him one night and he was explaining how he identified people. Like: I think the best I could compare it to would be synesthesia but without the seeing bit factoring in there, you know, ‘cause he’s blind.”

Silence. Then Schneep smacked himself on the forehead in epiphany. “Oh! So he senses us as a smell or somezing?”

“Usually a smell coupled with a taste, or a feeling or a sound or something, yeah. Thinking about it, that might be why he avoids parties. Because there’s so many of us it overwhelms him or something. Maybe something like this is a survival mechanism.”

|But he’s been at parties much larger than this before. He hated it, sure, but he didn’t get like this because of it.|

Chase just spread his hands. “I don’t know everything. My best guess would be that he can control just how much gets filtered in so he doesn’t get like this all of the time but…” He trailed off. 

“But what?”

“That actually makes a lot of sense. He must be freaking out.”

|But just because he can’t feel anything doesn’t mean he can’t move.|

“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. It’s just a theory.” 

More silence. 

“I guess the best thing we can do is wait for him to bring his senses back to normal?”

“I guess so.”

 

\----------

 

He was getting really bored. Only him and his thoughts. 

At least he could think about what might have happened. Had he just been overloaded with things and- no, wait, that didn’t make any sense. He’d gotten through worse things than that just fine. Wanting to be alone for a day or two, sure, but not anything like this. 

Okay… so what happened?

He searched his memories, something he’d become quite adept at over the years. Then a mental frown. There was… a strange gap. That was weird. He might not have the greatest spatial memory in the world, but he was able to recall things almost perfectly. 

He didn’t leave gaps. 

Just as he was going to try to unlock that door…

Everything sprung to life once more. He sat straight up. Huh. Perhaps the closing of that door had knocked out his senses? It was cold. Sterile.

“Why is the Host in medbay?”

Silence. Lavender. Quartz. Rubbing alcohol. Stale coffee. Sea air. 

|You collapsed on us back there. We are worried.|

He frowned. “Speaking of worried… the Host has to get to the library.”

He slung his feet over the edge of the bed- and his nose tingled with the scent of rubbing alcohol and he was pushed back into the bed. 

“You just collapsed. You aren’t going to go gallivanting around the manor until we’re sure you’re fine.”

His voice strengthened slightly from his usual muttering. “The Host is physically perfectly fine.”

|That’s not what we were worried about Host.|

That took him by surprise. Then he felt a flash of annoyance. “You cannot stop the Host.” His voice was low and dangerous. 

|I beg your pardon?| Dark’s voice matched his. 

Virgil had long decided he wasn’t needed around here. Iplier and Schneep looked torn between their jobs and their senses of preservation. 

“The Host has serious matters to attend to.”

|Well if it’s so serious, why don’t you share with the class? This could have all been avoided had you even once said how you perceived the world.| No it wouldn’t.

“Well the Host doesn’t know what happened and he means to find out before he forgets something else important!” He snapped. Dark let out a long breath. 

|Okay, fine. Go.|

“What? Dark-”

He waved off Iplier’s complaints. |He’s not going to cooperate. We might as well let him do what he needs to do and know where he is rather than him break out of here and be forced elsewhere.|

That reasoning was… rather infuriating. But no matter. Soon he’d have the gaps filled and a solution to his problem. 

R̶i̶g̶h̶t̶?

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger. 
> 
> This mini arc thing is going to be fun.


End file.
